Auric Damnation feels more spammy than it has ever been. Despite the update claiming we would see more quality over quantity the team is frequently completely collapsed upon by what appears to be a rave of ragers and maulers.
Yet this is the first time since months that I actually feel the spawns force me to adapt. The rager buffs made them actually kind of scary, as are the maulers. The team frequently has to fall back in order to deal with them.
Crushers and Bulwarks are very much a drafting check and if nobody in the team can deal with them they are incredibly oppressive when spawned in bulk.
The never ending mutie-swarm forces players to stay alert and mobile, while both Gunners and snipers force the team to take cover. Bombers, Flamers and Trappers now frequently get enough space to actually punish the team for not prioritizing them.
The only mob I still don’t see the purpose of is the hound. It’s just a turbo janky but less dangerous Trapper in 9/10 of the games. This of course outside the hound modifier, which does actually force you to adapt again.
Lots of problems with this approach especially in terms of readability (i.e. sound cues are way too hard to read sometimes), but overall I’m very pleased with how games “feel” in Auric Damnation/Mealstrom. You can actually lose if you don’t adapt, and I haven’t felt that way in many months.
I feel that these sorts of games benefit from a flow and ebb in intensity, but the director in DT never really did much in pacing compared to L4D’s director. The increased spawns just exacerbate how bad DT’s director is at pacing. Leave the balls to the wall non-stop waves of silent elites and 5 of a single specialist stacking on top of each other to the Aurics, SGs and High Ints, but reintroduce some pacing back into the normal difficulties.
seriously having big hordes to dump resources into for massive kill feeds is one of the highlights of the game, i think the biggest issue is that the matchmaking throwing together teams where no-one has a build to deal with large groups or spawning enemies behind you/enemies being completely silent
generally yes, but sometimes it bugs, and give much less spawns, dont know if it just happens in malestorm
it happened me in this, it was achivum sycorax weaves of specialist and minor monstruosities,scab only aswell, it was supposed to be hellish, but was a milkrun
They reduced the hordes (of terrors) for the console release and is just dropping elites in what’s left of the horde to try to maintain the intensity. Every horde. It’s getting too predictable. Maybe predictable isn’t the word, but constantly fighting 10+ ragers or crushers wears out its welcome really quickly because I feel they are badly designed or implemented.
Yeah that is more what I meant. More enemies is okay but just spamming ragers crushers and maulers (the enemies that just got a massive health buff in patch 14) is not fun. I don’t like constant sponge spam. I love special spam. Really forces me to keep my head on a swivel but elite spam? Not a fan.
I am in strong support of OP’s opinion. Though i would like to see fewer but much tougher CRUSHERS and a general nerf to rending’s effectiveness against carapace.
That idea concerns me since it discourages build variety.
As per your idea, Krak grenades are a must-have rather than an option for the Veteran for example.
Buffing Crusher’s equals us being forced to use boring meta loadouts in order to complete missions successfully.
We are currently facing an issue with Crushers and Maulers being outfitted with stealth technology and Ragers being spammed like there’s no tomorrow.
If you want more/stronger versions of Crushers, you must at least give them an weak point in their armor that may be used to stagger them.
Also; following your suggestion, Ogryn becomes the best class in the game, as he is the only one who can completely disrupt and keep baddies on their butts constantly with ease.
No it doesn’t. Because the current game completely eliminates build variety by completely everything killing everything. All the guns are turning into grey blocks that shoot magic kill everything bullets. There is no variety in that. Just does gun go full auto or not. Dry as hell.
Not it doesn’t. It just means bringing something that can handle them either in your loadout or the teams. That’s it. This is a return to how dangerous crushers were in patch 12
This is a bug or issue that can be fixed and balance decisions shouldn’t account for it.
Good.
No.
Bro your zealot IndyCrusher? Your vet shredder grenades?
no challenge no point. so im glad the spawns are there but im not sure brute numbers is really the most rewarding solution.
i do think before we go anywhere else the soundscape has become the thing that needs to be fixed first. and if you dont know what that means i suggest you take the time to spin up Vermintide 2 and listen , you hear everything, you hear the spawn, the movement, the aggro, the charge and then the attack and its distinct with your eyes closed you know whats coming from where.
Darktide is a mess. now to be fair , sure the whole way stuff spawns is different the greater focus on ranged enemy makes it harder and the sheer number of enemies all make replicating V2 hard/ impossible.
but the other day i dropped full tough to down in a second no warning it made me jump. as the camera went in to 3rd person i counted to 15 and i didnt get them all, 15+ gunners had silently spawned behind us silently walked in, silently aggroed then silently mirked me.
its starting to feel like this is the main cause of any down that happens for me
I love the Shredder Grenades, but they don’t stop the five Crushers from beelining us, so I either have to carry a big iron to deal with them, annoy them with my pee-shooter Brauto, play Ogryn and perma stagger/bleed them or hope someone else in the squad can make them go away.
On this point, we’ll agree to disagree.
I like the increased special spawns, but simply buffing or adding more Crushers is, in my opinion, a very lazy approach to encounter design.
I would rather have new, interesting enemy types that change up the gameplay.
It’s hellish with a bad team.
Did that same damn+auric+mael map last night w/ a buddy and a rando as a 3 player, the problematic player got kicked very early and the bot did its job.
It was slower due to lacking a player but it actually felt easier despite having 2x the specials and disablers. Just got ledged at the very hand from a pox+mutie combo.
Just before it we wiped on that as a 4 man because of lesser group…uh…proficiency.
Just goes to show you how many traitor heretics are among us.
Voice of Command and Psyker’s Dome Shield are now practically required in situations where you must be able to carry the group.
I had a Maelstrom as four Veterans for the first time ever yesterday, and it was the easiest Maelstrom I’d had in weeks because my squad’s skill level and team awareness were high, and we had a variety of ranged weapons, two shouts, one stealth, and one sharpshooter.
I now understand why the Imperial Guard is known as the “Emperor’s Hammer.”
FWIW, brittle/rending will turn that pea-shooter into armor penetrating frozen-carrot-shooter.
Its often worth the investment to go down Onslaught for instance, or if someone else is brittling go nuts.
Otherwise yeah, don’t waste your ammo (like soooo many do) and bring a power sword or something.
Done it with neither plenty of times, but it sure does help smooth out the shooter spikes and carry as you said. Somehow people find a way to always be out of shout range no matter how hard you try.
I’m enjoying the harder difficulty but it really shows how many people were and are ill-prepared for aurics. never having learned some of the fundamentals, this is what all those carries got us.
Between them, the fewer crates and med-station charges, people who waste them accidentally and on purpose can really suck the fun right out of a match though.
Hmmm, I have an opposite opinion, on higher difficulties at least, there should be carapace bulwarks and reapers, if not all of them, then like 1 per 3 or something.
Reaper is kinda useless enemy, low HP pool, easy to supress, slow animations.
Maybe some full carapace mauler officer with buff aura would be interesing too, or carapace rager, or infested mauler, etc.
It just doesn’t feel like enemy ogryns are ogryns at all, they are supposed to be shock troops of astra militarum. Better there will be less of them, but faster, stonger, more resilient and interesting to fight against.
Yeah, partially cause unlike gutter runner in V2 dog can’t jump on you from above (well after they fixed laika space program bug). But they buffed corruption damage it deals i think, so there is some progress.
